Pega Software Licenses JA_Final_Redacted.pdf

J&A No. JA20-003

JUSTIFICATION FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY -

BRAND NAME JUSTIFICATION

1. Identification of the Contracting Activity and the Requiring Agency.

The Contracting Activity is the Marine Corps Installations Command (MCICOM) Headquarters (HQ) Contracting located in Arlington, VA.

2. Nature and/or Description of the Action Being Approved.

The action being approved is an exception to fair opportunity for the solicitation of a Brand Name specific requirement for Pega Software Licenses (Solicitation M95494-20-Q-0007). This requirement will be competed on

NASA SEWP’s Groups B and C contracts which has authorized resellers of these software licenses. The resultant contract will be a firm-fixed-priced delivery order under the NASA SEWP contract vehicle.

3. Description of the Supplies/Services Required to Meet the Agency’s Needs (Including estimated value).

HQMC P&R requires an authorized reseller for Pega products to provide the continued use of Pega software licenses that currently support Phase III of P&R’s Business Mission Area (BMA) Modernization Campaign Plan.

The BMA campaign was launched in 2017 and contained three different phases. Phase I determined that intelligent

Business Process Management Suites (MS) software like Pegasystems should be piloted in order to determine if the solution would be suitable to automate business processes in the Financial Management (FM) portfolio. In Phase II, after piloting various iBPMS solutions, it was determined that Pega software, the industry leading iBPMS provider would be used to create the Manager’s Internal Controls Remediation and Reporting (MICRR) application to automate the A-123 compliance process. Now in Phase III, the licenses are required to sustain the users of the

MICRR application. The MICRR application includes 1500 Marine Corps and 500 Navy users. Additionally, users of future applications like Automated Lines of Hierarchical Appointment, Authorization, and Accountability

(ALOHAAA), scheduled to deploy on the Pega platform in mid FY20, will require the same Pega licenses. The licenses will allow the ability to rapidly scale business process automation on the Pega platform.

This requirement provides access to Pega Term licenses in support of P&R. P&R requires Pega Software access to perform case management across the BMA within the United States Marine Corps (USMC) and to complete Phase

III of the BMA campaign. Therefore, P&R requires access to the following Pega products as shown in the chart below:

Description Part Number Qty Period of Performance

PGP Regular Term

(200 users) PEGA-T-PGP-BNDL-REG 2,400 06 December 19 to 05 December 20

PGP Occasional

Term (650 users) PEGA-T-PGP-BNDL-OCC 7,800 06 December 19 to 05 December 20

PGP Sporadic Term

(1,150 users) PEGA-T-PGP-BNDL-SPO 13,800 06 December 19 to 05 December 20

Regular User– USMC staff or contractor using the USMC application during more than 50 hourly periods in a monthly period.

Occasional User – USMC staff or contractor using the USMC application during between 11-50 hourly periods in a monthly period.

Sporadic User– USMC staff or contractor using the USMC application during between 1-10 hourly periods in a monthly period.

4. Identification of the exception to fair opportunity.

FAR 16.505(b)(2)(i)(B) Only one awardee is capable of providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the supplies or services are unique or highly specialized. Per FAR 16.505(a)(4)(i), a brand-name item, even if available on more than one contract, is an item peculiar to one manufacturer. For this requirement, there are multiple companies that are authorized resellers of this brand-name item under the NASA

SEWP contract vehicle that can compete on this requirement. So although the exception to fair opportunity states

“only one awardee”, there are multiple companies that can fulfill P&R’s brand-name requirement.

5. Demonstration that the proposed contractor’s unique qualifications or the nature of the acquisition requires use of the exception to fair opportunity.

The USMC BMA launched the BMA Modernization Campaign in 2017 to prove that a service oriented architecture with platform services could be the catalyst for rapidly modernizing business processes across the Marine Corps. Phase I started in

2017 and discovered the capabilities and limitations of low-code platforms. Pegasystems was determined to be the low-code development market leader and was selected to pilot automating management and support processes in the Financial

Management (FM) portfolio of the BMA. Pegasystems is considered the leader in cloud software for customer engagement, customer service, and digital process automation. Pegasystems enables customers to set up processes that are efficient, flexible and transparent, which increases the auditability of the Marine Corps. The unique “Build for Change” features of the software make it possible to rapidly adapt processes to changing circumstances.

Phase II was executed in 2018-2019 and proved the ability to build low-code applications using the Pega platform. The outcome of Phase II determined that the Pega platform is a significant value added technology and was inserted into the technology baseline as a shared service for all Marine Corps Lines of Business to consume. Two applications were developed on Pega during Phase II: the Manager’s Internal Controls Remediation and Reporting (MICRR) and Automated

Line of Hierarchical Authorization, Appointment, and Accountability (ALOHAAA) with 2,000 users across the USMC and

Navy FM communities.

Now in Phase III, user licenses are required for MICRR and ALOHAAA to be operational. Additionally, the FM portfolio plans to automate 3-4 business processes per FY, which will require the consumption of Pega user licenses. The past three years of piloting revealed that Pegasystems is value added to the USMC BMA and now user licenses are required to keep production work-loads operational to the user base.

Starting over with a new low-code technology now will incur significant costs. First, the Pega platform took over two years to successfully navigate Information Assurance requirements and to operationalize in a closed cloud environment. The

BMA’s Pega platform was recently accredited as the first Software Factory in the Marine Corps. The Software Factory designation allows applications to execute an abbreviated Risk Management Framework (RFM), which significantly reduces the time from concept to production, approximately one year of RMF work to less than one month. P&R would have spent approximately $4M in hiring developers to complete the same amount of work in the same time span. Second, both contractor and government developers have refined their skills in Pega; shifting to any new technologies at this point would re-start the technology learning curve for developers, administrators, and integrators and would require significant training time and costs. Lastly, the Marine Corps will lose the ability to leverage the industry leader technology in low-code development, which has proven successful in rapidly modernizing business processes across the Marine Corps.

6. Determination by the contracting officer that the anticipated cost to the Government will be fair and reasonable.

The Government anticipates obtaining adequate competition via NASA SEWP. Obtaining adequate competition is expected to result in a price that is fair and reasonable. Prior to award, the Contracting Officer will conduct a price analysis in order to determine that the price is fair and reasonable.

7. Actions to Remove Barriers to Future Competition.

Market research was conducted in accordance with FAR Part 10, and revealed that there are multiple authorized resellers in the commercial market capable of providing the required supplies. Based on the commercial nature and the requirement’s acquisition timeline, NASA SEWP, an OMB-designated “best-in-class” Government-Wide

Acquisition Contract vehicle was researched to potentially streamline the acquisition process. The search yielded multiple vendors capable of providing the part numbers required; therefore, SEWP will be used to procure these licenses.

For the reasons set forth above, the activity has no plans at this time to eliminate the use of Pegasystems licenses from future solicitations; however, this will be reassessed during follow-on acquisition planning.

CERTIFICATIONS AND APPROVAL

Technical/Requirements Certification

I certify that the facts and representations under my cognizance, which are included in this Justification and its supporting acquisition planning documents are complete and accurate to the best of my knowledge and belief.

(Signature)______________________________________________Date_________________

Printed Name _____________________________________________________

Review for Legal Sufficiency:

(Signature)______________________________________________Date_________________

Printed Name____________________________________________________

Contracting Officer Certification

I certify that this Justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

(Signature)______________________________________________Date_________________

Printed Name____________________________________________________

Command Competition Advocate Approval

Upon the basis of the above justification, I hereby approve as Competition Advocate, the solicitation of the proposed procurement(s) described herein using brand name or equal descriptions or proprietary specifications and standards.

(Signature)______________________________________________Date_________________

Printed Name and Phone No.____________________________________________________